Saturday, December 19, 2009

The UN Climate Change Conference ended in failure. The last-minute accord negotiated by the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa, after most world leaders had left on December 18, was in no way binding. It was, in the words of The Independent, a British newspaper, "merely a political statement."

China was willing to assist a western economic suicide, but was not interested in participating. The Independent explains how China killed the agreement by refusing to compromise:

The day's most remarkable feature was a direct and unprecedented personal clash between the US President, Barack Obama, and the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, in which Mr Wen took deep offence at Mr Obama's insistence – in public – that the Chinese should allow their promised cuts in greenhouse gases to be internationally verified. When the President, in an unyielding speech, said that without international verification "any agreement would be empty words on a page", that was too much for Mr Wen. He left the conference in Copenhagen's Bella Centre, returned to his hotel in the city, and responded with a direct snub of his own – he sent low-level delegates to take his place in the talks.

A high-level source told The Independent that the US President was amazed when he found who he was negotiating with, and clearly regarded Mr Wen's absence as a major diplomatic insult. He snapped: "It would be nice to negotiate with somebody who can make political decisions"...

Perhaps President Obama would have found the sun to be a more tractable negotiation partner than China. In fact, the sun is actually cooperating -- its reduced electro-magnetic emissions appear to be causing the world's cooling at the moment.